The gearbox on my Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 diesel failed at high speed on a motorway, with the wheels locking solid. A frightening experience. Gearbox is shot and my local dealer wants more than £3500 to fix it.

I took the car to local independent garage and they showed me that the clutch had failed, a component coming loose and, over time, gouging a hole in the gearbox casing causing the failure. The service records of the car show that I have complained on three occasions about an intermittent juddering from the clutch which Volkswagen have been unable to rectify.

At the time of the incident it had 56,000 recorded miles and was almost exactly four years old. The local garage is having the gearbox reconditioned.

My question is: do I have a viable legal case against VW here and if so, how do I set about fighting it? Finding a good consumer lawyer is difficult. I could shrug and walk away but it does not feel right that a four year old car with no great mileage on it should fail in this way, particularly as I began raising the clutch problem in July 2014.